


Intelligence (or Beau's Criminal Past)

by TheMugCollector88



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Beau Week 2019, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 04:35:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18564022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMugCollector88/pseuds/TheMugCollector88
Summary: I just had to do something for Beau Week. Sorry if my writing is a little rusty.My take in Beau's unhappy childhood.If Beau had been a boy, it would be different. A son could learn the books and grow to manage the estate.But she is not a son and five-year-old Beau knows this is the worse crime of all.





	Intelligence (or Beau's Criminal Past)

Beau has always been smart.  
It’s one of the things that got her in trouble.

Beau knows she is a disappointment to her parents even before she understands the words.  
But she likes words. She absorbs them like a sponge.  
Remembering everything ever said to her.   
Remembering everything spoken in her presence.

Father doesn’t know what to make of an intelligent child.  
Daughter’s should not be smart.  
Daughter’s should do as they are told.  
Father doesn’t like his five-year-old daughter correcting him.  
A daughter must never talk back to her father… even if she is right.  
Mother does not know what to make of her either.  
Mother is not intelligent.  
Mother only cares about gowns and jewels and gossip.  
Mother is the perfect woman; the perfect wife… Almost perfect. She could not bear Father a son.  
If Beau had been a boy, it would be different. A son could learn the books and grow to manage the estate.  
But she is not a son and five-year-old Beau knows this is the worse crime of all.  
But talking too much is a crime as well and would lead to Father reaching for his belt.  
Young Beau soon found herself faltering on every other word, terrified that the next one would be the wrong one and be followed by violence.  
She learnt to play at being forgetful.  
She learnt it was safer to get things wrong.  
She learnt to be a liar.  
She was intelligent after all.

Beau does not like to be still.  
Father does not approve and calls her boisterous.  
This is her third crime.  
A daughter should be seen and not heard.  
A daughter should preferably not even be seen.  
Mother does not care for a fidgeting child.  
A daughter should sit quietly and embroider.  
A daughter should sit straight in her corset and gown.  
A daughter should be a fragile flower awaiting to be plucked by the perfect man.  
Beau cannot be the person her mother is. It is almost painful to be forced to sit and do nothing. She wants to run and dance and climb and play.  
Ten-year-old Beau is also beginning to see that the smile of a pretty girl was much more appealing than that of a greasy young man.  
In a misjudged moment she tells her mother this.  
Father came to her that night and violence followed.  
A good daughter wants a husband.  
Beau does not.  
Her fourth crime.  
Ten-year-old Beau learns to pretend to be a good daughter.  
Ten-year-old Beau lets lies fall from her lips like water until even she loses track.  
Lying keeps her safe.  
She is intelligent after all.

When she was thirteen Beau came to a realisation.  
Father wasn’t always right.  
Knowing that made her question every decree ever laid out to her.  
It had come as a shock; it also made her very angry. An anger that would never quite leave her.  
When she was thirteen Beau also realised how much her mother hated her life.  
How much her Mother hated Father.  
How much her Mother resented that he had control of her families money and her families estate.  
All Mother had in the world were her gowns and her jewels and her gossip and her ungrateful daughter.  
Her mother had surrender.  
Thirteen-year-old Beau realised she would never let herself surrender to that kind of unhappiness.  
She started breaking the rules, just to see what would happen.  
Would sneaking out of the house be worse than being trapped inside it’s stifling walls?  
Turns out the answer was no.  
Would drinking alcohol poison her?  
Well at first it tasted foul, but the buzz she got took away some of the fear and it felt good to be brave. The hangover in the morning sucked, but the pain was nothing compared to that brief moment of escape.  
Would kissing a pretty girl bring shame on her family?  
Well the first girl wasn’t all that pretty and charged her two copper, but her lips were soft even if her breath tasted of stale beer. The second girl charged a silver and they shared a bed as well.   
Father found out and violence followed but Beau knew where her heart belonged, and Father wasn’t right about this either.  
Maybe some of the rules Beau broke shouldn’t have been broken. Maybe people got hurt.   
But Beau had been forced into a tight ill-fitting box her whole life and freedom, like wine, is intoxicating.

It ended in violence, like always.  
But this time it wasn’t her father’s fist striking her. Dark robed figures grabbed her, pulled a hood over her eyes. Punched hard in a way that stopped her from moving.   
Father would send his intelligent daughter to a library as a punishment... something else for him to get wrong.


End file.
